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MIKE DAVIS talks about his new book Buda’s Wagon: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CAR BOMB. Reviewer John Leonard praised the book in Harper’s for its “savage sarcasm. . . As usual with Davis, this brilliant little book tells us things we’d rather not hear. One the one hand, the use of the car bomb, with its collateral damage to civilians, invariably corrupts the cause for which it has been enlisted; nothing excuses the death of children. On the other hand, add suicide to fertilizer and it’s a tactic we can’t beat, an equalizer for the deracinated and deranged alike.”

Also: HAROLD MEYERSON with our Washington political update – Harold is an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and acting executive editor of The American Prospect.

Plus: Inside the bubble in Baghdad: American officials in Baghdad inhabit an isolated world: the Green Zone, a walled fortress filled with villas, swimming pools, and shiny new SUVs. It’s ground zero for cultural blindness, neo-con fanaticism, and imperial fantasy – the place where the American effort to remake Iraq was always doomed to failure. Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post tells that story in his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone – he was awarded the Ridenhour Book Prize by The Nation Institute today.

Guest host on the radio today–I’m going home to St. Paul for a visit. My home town will be the site of the 2008 Republican National Convention! Today’s news from the St. Paul Pioneer Press: “Protesters who show up for next year’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul will be welcomed with the ‘same respect and honor afforded to conventioneers,’ a draft City Council resolution promises. The council is aiming to protect First Amendment rights.”

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America’s official reaction to terrorist threats has been more harmful than the terrorist threats themselves: That’s what John Mueller argues in his new book OVERBLOWN: How Politicans and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them. The war on terror, he shows, has been a wild overreaction to a rare event; the odds of any American being killed by international terrorism are microscopic. John Muller holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at Ohio State University.

Also; VERLYN KLINKENBORG of the New York Times talks about the UglyRipe tomato, dying beehives across America, and Minnesota’s “concealed carry” gun laws. His book The Last Fine Time is a gorgeous recollection of Buffalo after WWII. He’s a visiting writer in residence at Pomona college this term. Verlyn Klinkenborg will be speaking in the downtown LA Public Library ALOUD series on Sunday, March 25 at 3pm.

Plus: Attorney General ALBERTO GONZALEZ twisting slowly, slowly in the wind: In Washington, where the discussion about Alberto Gonzales’ removal has moved from “if” to “when” speculation, the talk is already turning to the question of who will take over for the scandal-plagued Attorney General.
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JOHN NICHOLS comments – he’s Washington Correspondent for The Nation, he writes “The Online Beat” blog at TheNation.com, and his most recent book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism (The New Press).

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The last few weeks have seen a vast outpouring of reports on mistreatment of wounded Iraq war outpatients following the Washington Post’s revelations of conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Stories of neglect and substandard care have flooded in from soldiers, their family members, veterans, doctors and nurses working inside the system. The official response has been swift — but the reaction outside official Washington has been much deeper. ANNE HULL of the Washington Post explains – she broke the story of the shocking conditions at Walter Reed. Also: SEE Washington Post photos of the wounded.
Your Minnesota Moment: The suicide of a marine came after he served in Iraq.

Also: OIL ON THE BRAIN: Americans consume 10,000 gallons of gas a second – three gallons per person per day. Where does all this oil come from? And where is it taking us? LISA MARGONELLI explains – her new book is Oil on the Brain. Barbara Ehrenreich says: “from the corner gas station to the oil fields of Nigeria, there couldn’t be a better traveling companion than Margonelli. She’s fast, fearless, funny, and a brilliant observer.”
Lisa Margonelli will be in conversation at the downtown LA Public Library ALOUD series at 700pm tonight/Wed – the event officially is “Full – standby only.”

Plus: THE TROUBLE WITH DIVERSITY: Our celebration of “difference” masks our neglect of America’s vast economic divide—that’s what WALTER BENN MICHAELS argues in his new book. Affirmative action in schools has not made them more open, it’s just guaranteed that the rich kids come in the appropriate colors. Diversity training in the workplace has not raised anybody’s salary (except maybe the diversity trainers’), but it has guaranteed that when your job is outsourced, your culture will be treated with respect.

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RY COODER’s new CD, “My Name is Buddy,” released today, is a parable of the radical imagination—it details the life, rambles, and political education of Buddy Red Cat. Ry is joined on the CD by Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger, Van Dyke Parks, and Flaco Jiminez, among others. The CD comes with a book of vignettes about each song and drawings by Vicent Valdez. Ry Cooder’s last CD was Chavez Ravine; his Buena Vista Social Club changed the world.

Plus: President Bush says Iran is “meddling” in Iraq: ADAM SHATZ says Iran “might have legitimate interests in what is, after all, its own geographic neighborhood.” Adam is literary editor of The Nation; recently he wrote about Iran and Iraq for the LA Times “Current” section.

Also: MICHAEL ERIC DYSON talks about race: how it is conceived; how it is expressed; how it is lived; how it confers power; how it undermines social stability; how it ruins or revives lives; how it is embraced and discarded. “Michael Eric Dyson is the most courageous and visionary public intellectual on the scene today.” — Cornel West. Dyson is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania; his new book is Debating Race. He will be speaking tonight/Wed in the downtown LA Public Library ALOUD Series at 700pm. The event is officially full – standby only.

An eyewitness report from Iraq: filmmaker Laura Poitras talks about her award-winning documentary “My Country My Country” – it tells the story of a Sunni activist-doctor named Riyadh — an opponent of the occupation, a clear-thinking, educated everyman on a quiet crusade in Baghdad to heal whatever damage he can, and to get Sunnis to vote in Iraq’s 2005 elections.

It’s “the definitive non-fiction film about the occupation of Iraq: indispensable, heartbreaking, and ferociously wise. Time and again, Poitras manages to be where platoons of US telejournalists were afraid to go . . . the most valuable piece of film to emerge about the war in all of its three-plus years.” – Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice. The film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary.

We’ll be featuring the DVD of “My Country My Country” as a thank-you gift in the 4pm hour today as the KPFK fund drive continues. You can pledge online at www.kpfk.org.

MIKE DAVIS talks about his new book Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb – it’s our featured premium in the KPFK fund drive today. Reviewer John Leonard praised the book in the new Harper’s for its “savage sarcasm. . . As usual with Davis, this brilliant little book tells us things we’d rather not hear. One the one hand, the use of the car bomb, with its collateral damage to civilians, invariably corrupts the cause for which it has been enlisted; nothing excuses the death of children. On the other hand, add suicide to fertilizer and it’s a tactic we can’t beat, an equalizer for the deracinated and deranged alike.”

We’ll also be featuring the brand new “Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back/’65 Tour Deluxe Edition” DVD, featuring an hour of special features, including commentary from filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and more music from the tour.
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Robert Hilburn in the LA Times wrote, “the greatest rock movie ever . . . just got better.”

It’s the KPFK fund drive, today cohosting with Suzi Weissman, and featuring the new DVD, “The US vs. John Lennon,” during the hour.
“The U.S. vs. John Lennon” tells the story of Lennon’s transformation from loveable moptop to anti-war activist, and recounts the facts about Nixon’s campaign to deport him in 1972. With Walter Cronkite, Gore Vidal, Mario Cuomo, George McGovern, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, G. Gordon Liddy, Yoko Ono, and Jon Wiener–and archival footage of Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and John Lennon.

We’ll also be featuring the soundtrack CD from the documentary, and the book on which the documentary was based: Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files – and also the 2-CD audio documentary from the Pacifica Archives, “John Lennon: The Political and the Personal,” featuring interviews with, among others, Pete Seeger and Abbie Hoffman.

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“Black Like Me”: GARY YOUNGE explains “the magnitude of the Obama-thon currently taking place.” “What the nation has liked most,” Younge says, “is not what Obama has said or done but what he is. In short, Obama is a black man who does not scare white people. This is mostly not Obama’s fault. He is who he is.” Gary writes for The Guardian and The Nation.

Also: Girl Groups of the Sixties: a 4-CD Rhino box set, nominated for a Grammy, features the lesser known but more revealing singles and B-sides: One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds, Lost & Found. Jon Pareles of the New York Times wrote, “to hear all these long-suffering voices is to realize that feminism didn’t arrive an instant too soon.” GARY STEWART and SHERYL FARBER will explain. (Originally broadcast 11-30-2005)

Plus: CHALMERS JOHNSON talks about his new book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic — on the unintended consequences of our dependence on a permanent war economy. It’s a staggering tale of American hubris from “our most prescient critic of American empire and its pretensions.” (Andrew Bacevitch) In Greek mythology, Nemesis is the goddess of retribution, who punishes human transgressions of the right order of things and the arrogance that causes them.

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HOWARD ZINN talks about America’s current political and ethical crisis. His new book is A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.
Special event Thurs Feb. 1, 730pm: readings from Voices of a People’s History of the US with co-author Anthony Arnove, Alfre Woodard, Rosie Perez, Elizabeth Pena, Mark Ruffalo, and members of Ozomatli:
All Saints Church, 132 N. Euclid St., Pasadena.
It’s a fundraiser for Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. info at http://www.icujp.org or 626-683-9004.
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